Friday 16 October 2009

The One that Didn't Work, by Meg Nakagawa

I'd like to share with you something that didn't work for me. After weaving two Frou Frou scarves, I wanted to insert the eyelash accents vertically. I hoped to pin down the eyelash yarns every inch or so in two pics, and after some experimentation, I decided to have three ends in four places.

The mechanism was simple and straight-forward. As you can see, I didn't thread them, but sleyed, and every inch or so, I held down the eyelash yarns and let the shuttle travel over them.

Aesthetically, however, it didn't work at all. I either needed more or less of the eyelashes in each tripe, or more or fewer groups, and perhaps I needed a bolder draft.

Such as the reverse side of the draft I used.

There is much scope for experimentation and sampling here for me, if and I am in a Frou Frou mood again. But for now, with the arrival of the hay fever season, the eye lash yarns have been put in a plastic bag and put away.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks to me as if you have too many eyelash warps per stripe, but I wonder if the main problem is that the actual eyelashes look [on my computer screen anyway]as if they are much lighter in value than the rest of the warps, even if the eyelash 'core' is not. Tricky little beasts! I always have trouble getting novelty yarns to behave as I plan in my mind's eye, and I'm definitely not alone in that.
The back side of the scarf looks sumptuous - maybe you can simply pull out some or all of offending yarns if you don't think the eyelash effect is salvagable.
Chris

Meg said...

They are much lighter than the warp - the blue part of the eyelash very similar to the weft. Eye lash too long and/or too numerous for the size of the piece or the width of the stripe and generally too discordant and busy.

I ended up weaving a piece without any eye lashes, Chris, but I've saved them because I know it can be dome. Hopefully by me, before too long?

:-)

Rose said...

I share your frustration Meg. The only real success I've had using this sort of yarn is was to use LOTS of it in boa type scarves. Sort of "more is more" for a change. I'm not anxious to use it again.

Meg said...

Hi, Rose. Yes, difficult. I just have to sig and experiment more if I want to use them. For now, they're all in one bag in a big box. I'm not in a hurry to solve the mystery, shall we say?